09/13/2010

Posted By: Robin Magnuson

A story recently made the rounds through various websites, blogs and listservs dedicated to the parking industry, as well as hundreds of email inboxes owned by parking managers, consultants and executives.

As the story goes, the only parking attendant at a popular lot near the Bristol Zoo in England had recently announced his retirement after 25 years of service.  Day in and day out, regardless of the weather and without fail, the humble gentleman would present himself at the 150-space lot first thing in the morning, well-dressed and ever cheerful, to collect £5 (about $7.70) from every driver as they entered.

Like many good parking attendants, this gentleman had built strong relationships with the parkers he saw day in and day out, including the Executive Director of the zoo. At the urging of his office staff, the director took it upon himself to organize a surprise retirement party at the zoo to honor the attendant upon his last day of duty. The director invited all of the lot’s regular customers as well as a number of local dignitaries, including the town’s mayor, to the party as well.

The party was great success, with many toasts and words of kind gratitude towards the recent retiree for his long term of service.  Sometime in the evening, long after the guest of honor has retired for the night, the zoo director found himself at a table with the town mayor. Searching for a conversation starter, the zoo director ventured that he thought it might be quite challenging to find a replacement for the beloved parking attendant. The mayor agreed it would and inquired whether the zoo director had started his search yet. The zoo director replied that he had not started a search, as the gentleman is question was not a zoo employee, to which the mayor stated that he was certainly not on the town’s payroll.

Over the next half hour the two executives established that the recently good and loyal public servant had never been in the service of either organization or any group associated with the city or the zoo. Further investigation revealed that the lot was actually a vacant property and that the absent owner had no knowledge of its use as a commercial parking facility or record of every retaining the attendant.  Most shocking, some quick math suggested that this humble attendant - who apparently was in business for himself - had collected a modest £6,825,000 ($10,510,500) over the span of his career!

Like a lot of great stories, a little internet research has revealed this one to be too good to be true. But this entertaining fiction has a large number of factual foundations. According to Google, parking goes together with scandal, fraud and embezzlement like campfires and ghost stories. Consider the following lead sentences from actual news items revealed in the same internet search:

• Harlingen, Texas: 3/30/2010. “Harlingen police arrested a man accused of embezzling more than $39,000 from the parking lot vendor at the Valley International Airport.”

• San Francisco, California: 3/12/2008. “A financial consultant who allegedly embezzled $3.5 million from the nonprofit operating a parking garage beneath Golden Gate Park will likely lose his house to pay back the money.”

• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 8/12/2004. “Nearly 10 years after the discovery of a parking scandal encompassing at least 17 persons and over $3,000,000 in stolen funds, the last defendant in the Philadelphia International Airport investigation was sentenced to federal prison.”

• New Brunswick, New Jersey: 6/29/2010. “Four security officers working for the New Brunswick Parking Authority have been arrested and charged with stealing nearly $3,000 in parking fees.”

• Trenton, New Jersey: 12/11/2009. “Attorney General Anne Milgram announced that John P. Corea, former director of the Hoboken Parking Utility, was indicated today on charges that he conspired to steal more than $600,000 in parking meter revenue that he allegedly split with a Toms River contractor whose company was hired by the City of Hoboken to collect coins from parking meters.”

• Boston, Massachusetts: 4/22/2010. “Two men were arrested on accusations that they attempted to charge the public for parking spaces in an MBTA employee lot near North Station before the Boston Celtics game on Tuesday night."

• St. Petersburg, Florida: 4/22/2010. “Two women were charged with a scheme to defraud after detectives say one of them admitted to flagging down fans and charging 23 drivers a fee of $10.00 each to park illegally in the parking lot of the apartment building she lived in. Police say the two split the profits knowing the cars might later be towed.”

• Austin, Texas: 5/6/2009. “Austin Police say that imposters, posing as parking attendants and collecting fees in closed lots, are becoming a persistent problem. The imposters will often use bolt cutters to open the chain or gate of a closed parking lot serving an office building or clinic, don a yellow or orange traffic vest and apron, and collect up to $10.00 per car on a busy weekend night.”

• Milwaukee, Wisconsin: 12/15/2008. “Jim Kirk was searching for a place to park around 7 p.m. Sunday near the Bradley Center when three men braving the evening wind and rain ushered him into a gravel lot at 324 W. Juneau Avenue. One man collected cash - $10 – and the others used yellow wands to direct parkers into neat rows, Kirk said. About an hour and half later, as Kirk and his wife enjoyed the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert, a city parking checker ticked dozens of vehicles parked illegally in the lot, writing at least $4,000 worth the tickets.”

• New Castle, Pennsylvania: 2/7/2009. “A former parking official is accused of stealing more than $100,000 from parking meters.”

• Houston, Texas: 10/21/2002. “From 1994 to 1997, Cecil Rhodes and Jackie Headley were employed at the [Tuscaloosa County Parking and Transit] Authority as the executive director and assistant director, respectively. Over the four years they were employed by the Authority, they, through different schemes, embezzled funds totaling over $300,000.”

• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 6/9/2010.  “Half a dozen Philadelphia City or Parking Authority workers are out of a job after a top government watchdog says they blatantly fixed parking tickets for people they know. The wiped tickets may have cost the city tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue in the midst of another budget crisis."

• Albany, New York: 4/28/2010. “The [Albany] Police department and its officers’ union came under fire for so-called ghost tickets.  The secret tickets containing ‘bulls-eye’ stickers and thus carrying no monetary penalties were issued to private vehicles of city police, spouses, friends and city-employed civilians so drivers could park on city streets without fines or penalties.  Records show a total of 57,450 voided parking tickets over the last eight years amounting to $4 million in lost revenue.”

• Richmond, Virginia: 12/8/2009. “On July 30, 2008, Eric Santos James Oryem was convicted of four counts of embezzlement by a public officer. Between 2004 and 2007, Oryem was the officer in charge of parking meter collections for the Parking Office of Northern Virginia Community College. According to Oryem’s bank records, from April 2, 2006 until October 7, 2006, he deposited $33,469 in coins. Moreover, after Oryem was fired, parking meter receipts quadrupled over a six-month period.”

• Charleston, West Virginia: July 31, 1999. “The [West Virginia] Office of Legislative Auditor reported that the failure to implement internal controls recommended in a 1982 audit resulted in the theft of almost $23,000 in parking meter revenues over an eight month period in FY1998.”

The saddest part about this laundry list of greed and corruption is that it is likely just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  Theft from publicly-owned facilities makes the local paper, because any reported financial loss or personnel dismissal is a matter of public record and discoverable through a Freedom of Information request. When someone gets caught stealing from a private facility, the theft often goes unreported – even to the local police, as it can often cost more time and money to prosecute the offender than they actually stole from the owner.

As these scandals have come to light, the parking industry has responded in a number of different ways. Parking equipment manufacturers have introduced increasingly sophisticated and elaborate Parking Access and Revenue Control Systems (PARCS) equipment to track how users and money moves through a facility. Parking consulting firms have developed entire divisions dedicated to auditing parking facilities, identifying shortfalls in the internal controls and closing loopholes where the owner’s money can leak out.  Many parking operators promote their own proprietary software systems, auditing programs and personnel screening procedures designed to provide an additional layer of security.

At VPNE, we are dedicated to revenue control and integrity. Our managers and executives participate in trade organizations like the National Parking Association, the International Parking Institute and the National Valet Parking Association to keep abreast of industry trends. We attend parking industry events like the New England Parking Council Spring Conference and the Parking Industry Exhibition to learn about advances in employee recruiting and screening. We regularly meet with PARCS manufacturers like Amano McGann and SkiData to keep current with the latest technological advances. We have our own independent internal auditors to review our operations and help train our managers in fiscal controls.  

At VPNE we spend as much time, money and energy developing and caring for our people as we do on systems, equipment and procedures.  We recruit and select only the best, brightest and most capable candidates after a careful screening and an extensive background review process. Once employed, we offer our staff compensation packages above the industry average and regular opportunities to supplement income through additional assignments. For those folks who want to grow with the company, we have multiple opportunities for growth and advancement including on-going training, tuition reimbursement and our management development program. We keep our people motivated with our Exceptional Service recognition program, which allows managers to hand out bonuses on the spot when they catch our employees going above and beyond. And we provide two-layers of management at every location to watch over every facility - - and the people who work there.

These are all important steps to making sure that every dollar your operator collects makes it into your account, but they are not the whole journey. State-of-the-art PARCS equipment, proprietary software and custom-designed procedures are just tools. To really have a solid, secure system, you need the right people using them.  People who are intrinsically honest, reasonably compensated and motivated to do the right thing.